The manufacture of Micro-Electro-Mechanical-Systems (MEMS), such as micro-gyroscopes, micro-accelerometers, resonant accelerometers, RF devices, RF resonators, micro-mirrors, micro-motors, micro-actuators and other such micro-devices integrating at least one moving and/or particular component operating under sub-atmospheric conditions creates a very serious challenge for packaging. The vast majority of MEMS-based devices require the encapsulation to be done before wafer dicing so as to protect against micro-contamination from particles and dicing slurry while the wafers are processed like a standard semiconductor chip, and avoid the need for dedicated equipment or processes for dicing, mounting and molding. Most MEMS-based gyroscopes, MEMS-based accelerometers, MEMS-based inertial sensors, MEMS-based RF switching devices, MEMS-based resonators and other such MEMS devices, which are susceptible to a reduction of performance due to gas-induced damping (reduction of Q-factor) or gas-induced degradation, are influenced by the hermeticity of the packaging.
A sealed package to encapsulate the moving and/or particular components in vacuum or in a controlled atmosphere in a sealed protection micro-cavity is necessary to ensure reliable operation.
This micro-cavity is typically fabricated using microelectronics fabrication technologies to produce, on the wafer itself, a hermetic wafer-level package over each one of the various MEMS devices present on the wafer. Various approaches have been proposed to generate such a sealed wafer-level package, of which only a few permit the fabrication of a truly hermetically sealed hermetic package.